


Things in Common

by firearms57



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/M, Knotting, NSFW, Sex, Smut, adaar used to be in the antaam, bull's a dick, kossith biology is different, mostly because he has one the size of a school bus, ooo sexy burn, qunlat woo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-11
Updated: 2018-10-11
Packaged: 2019-07-29 10:12:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,915
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16262087
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/firearms57/pseuds/firearms57
Summary: The Iron Bull likes a challenge. Asaara likes living with her tongue intact and limbs unbound. Both like to fuck.





	Things in Common

**Author's Note:**

> surprise! adaar/bull smut because reasons. 
> 
> note:  
> qunlat is in italics. if you dont know what a word means, look it up. that's how i did it.
> 
> more important note: this was done at 1 in the morning. it sucks. like horribly. so i thought itd be a good idea to post it to the public eye, because the world is better for this wonderful work of prose amiright

In wake of Hawke at Kirkwall, a breach in the sky that allowed beasts and demons to wander mortal earth, the revelation that said breach was the product of ancient Tevinter magic at the hand of a madman named Corypheus, Asaara was not easily impressed. It was not merely people that had dulled in interest, but rather the world itself. Once full of wonder at the sight of a river eddying into a stream, or the way the trees at Haven lanced up through the sky, she found her head too cluttered to appreciate nature's simple beauty. Another thing to curse fate for; it had taken too many of her pleasures.   

All that said, the Iron Bull intrigued her. She had not seen a kossith in four years, a Qunari in ten, and she'd almost forgotten what it was to look a man in the eye. Between the first moment she made out the gray lines of his body against the craggy stone behind him, and then along the thirty pace journey it took to reach him, Asaara found her mind confabulating stories of how their interaction would go. Would he greet her as a sister, put his arm around her shoulders and speak to her in her mother tongue? Or would he remain true to the Qun, take one look at the scars about her lips and name her  _basra_? Would he try to kill her? 

His hostility, she was prepared for. Kinship, she was prepared for. But nothing could have readied her for the truth of his disguise. She had thought him Karashok,  maybe Karasten from the ease with which he commanded his men, but in his eye was the telltale gleam of something far more infamous. She hadn't seen one of his kind since —

She halted five paces away, appalled it had taken her this long to guess at his identity. Her hands itched with the urge to cast,  to grip the leather-wrapped handle of her knife. 

From her left, Cassandra sent her a puzzled look.

Bull grunted when she made no move to step closer, hefted the great war hammer on her back. "Didn't really believe the rumors that a Vashoth was in charge of the Inquisition," he said.  "Didn't think anyone with horns could get approval from the  _bas_ , let alone order them around." His smile was lecherous. "Guess it doesn't hurt to be female. How'd you do it? Bare your tits to the Chantry brothers?"

Cassandra made an affronted noise, and Varric chuckled, but Asaara just watched him. 

Oddly, her wary scrutiny only made him grin. She had the feeling that he liked a challenge, and the way he was looking at her made clear she was a particularly attractive conquest.

"Not a talker, eh?" He hummed in the back of his throat.

"Seheron does that to mages." Her voice was sharp, brittle, and it took conscious effort to keep her tongue from running across the grooves and bumps dotting her lips.

The silence that followed her statement made clear that everyone in her party was wise to the horrors Par Vollen wrought against its mages. 

Bull considered her for a long moment, but he didn't seem intimidated, not even offended. He let his hammer fall to the his side, blunt head making a distinctive * _thud_ * as it struck ground. "What's your name?" 

"Asaara."

She realized she'd answered him only _after_ she'd done so, and she balked at the thought that though she'd long left it, the Qun still held mastery over her.

The Iron Bull looked for half a second like he'd give her a compliment, but then his lips pulled back into an infuriating smirk. "Mind if I shorten that to  _Saar?_ "

Asaara's jaw clenched hard enough to hurt, and Cassandra had the feeling she was missing something important.

"You'll mind your tongue, Ben-Hassreth," she said, and her voice was chillier than the wind that ripped through Skyhold at night, "or I'll rip it out so you don't have to."

Behind his gaze, he held a glimmer of surprise that she'd guessed at the truth of his nature so quickly, but outwardly he only grinned. "See, now you're just proving my point, Saarebas."

Asaara hissed through her teeth. Though she did not lash out, the control she used to hamper her magic was slipping. Her eyes were suddenly brighter, and static picked at the edges of her hair. Cassandra reached for the sword at her hip. Asaara had a familiar tension in her body, the same sort you'd see on a bowstring just before an arrow loosed. It was the look she got before she drew clouds from a blue sky, sent a streak of lightning arcing through the air. It was the same look she got before she sent a dagger at Vivienne's head (and missed on purpose, Cassandra suspected, for her aim had always been accurate to the point of absurdity). Her skill as a warrior by no means meant she wanted to get between two qunari hell-bent on pulling the other's intestines out through their ass, but she'd do it if she had to. She could never live with herself if she had to explain to Leliana that she'd lost the Inquisitor to a qunari man who didn't know how to speak to women.

Luckily, Asaara saved Cassandra the trouble of having to navigate such a fight by turning on her heel and stalking back in the direction they came. 

"Let's go, Cassandra," she said. "Nothing here but trash."

Cassandra had to blink a few times before she realized what had happened. Before she realized that the Inquisitor was turning down a mercenary band known locally as the best, even with Leliana's warnings that they needed personal guard outside Cullen's troops, all because their leader happened to be an idiot.

"Asaara, wait!"

She halted mid-stride but did not turn around. 

"Inquisitor," Cassandra said when she caught up to her and Varric. "You are throwing away an alliance we seek to gain from before you even meet the other side."

"I've met enough of them," Asaara said darkly. "Ben-Hassreth are almost as bad as Arvaarad." Her face twisted to fury, the expression at once familiar and ugly on her face. "They killed my _kith_ , you know. The two Saarebas that fought alongside me. Even though we fought for  _ataash_ , even though we were Qunari. I still don't understand why."

Asaara stopped, embarrassed, when she realized she was rambling, then colored further when she found the words on her tongue were Qunlat's guttural burr, and from the mix of pity and apologetic confusion on Cassandra's face, she had not a clue what they were talking about.

It didn't much matter, she supposed. The Seeker would not have understood even if she'd prepared a perfectly worded speech in Nevarran. Qunari were a strange lot, and the convolutions of their hatred made little sense to those not subject to it.

With a sigh, she began again in common, the words clumsy and accented in a way they hadn't been since her youth. "He is a danger to me, Cassandra. You see how he plays with me for his own fun. I cannot side with my enemy."

Cassandra grimaced thoughtfully. "I cannot pretend to know what it is that seeds the hatred between you, but it is important you remember what time we are living in. The Inquisition is not a place to dwell on past rivalry, nor is it a place to pretend love where love is lacking. We fight under temporary truce because there is a threat greater than my family's intentions for me, or Leliana's lost warden, or Dorian being a pariah, or Isabela missing Hawke, and Hawke missing Isabela. The same way we all manage, I believe you will have to as well."

Asaara's gaze was to the ground, not demure but lost in thought. The furrow between her brows grew deeper as the seconds passed. 

Finally, she lifted a hand to rub at her temple and let out a sigh. 

When Asaara began walking again without further words, Cassandra snapped from her reverie and called, "W-wait! Inquisitor! What about —?"

"I accept. Tell The Iron Bull that he and his Chargers are welcome in Skyhold."

Her voice was dull and dry as desert air, and it held within it such dull resignation that Cassandra began to question whether or not it had been right to push yet another load onto a back already burdened.

*

"You know, I can tell when you're staring." 

Asaara stopped doing just that and sent him a glare. "You're full of shit."

Skyhold's tavern was busy this time of day, and while she normally did her best to hide from her adoring crowd, she'd woken up to Vivienne's lecturing and a pile of paperwork, and right now she needed something strong to kick her headache into submission.

Bull chuckled. "For someone so vocal about the fact that I'm Ben-Hassreth, you seem to forget what the word means most of the times you speak with me."

Asaara refrained from regaling the sudden rude comment that had sprung to mind but could not, however, resist muttering it into her cup. 

Bull watched her for a moment before he looked down into his own mug of ale and grimaced. "I'd kill for some Maraas-Lok right now."

Asaara snorted. "Skyhold's equipped to hold off hordes of demons, not hold  _on_  to exotic vintage."

"You ever tried it, boss?" 

Asaara looked up sharply and met his too-cool gaze. In the months they'd know each other, he had yet to bring up her past life, no matter how obvious is was to his trained eye. She'd thought perhaps it made him uncomfortable, but no matter the reason she was more than comfortable to go on with their acquaintance without added complications.

"You want to talk about Seheron _now_?" she asked bluntly.

"Well, yeah!" Bull kicked his feet onto the table and gave a broad wave of his hand. "Don't you miss it? Drinks that can actually get you drunk! Food with flavor! None of this  _bas_  shit."

"Sure, that stuff's nice if you have a mouth that can open to properly chew your food."

She said it mildly but made no attempt to hide the bite to her voice. 

Bull, to his credit, didn't even flinch. "What? Gray mash no good for you? I've always wondered what it'd be like to eat through a straw."

"Not a problem." Asaara gave a mocking a bow. "Attend my chambers this evening and I will teach you all my evil Saarebas magic. You should have your lips stitched in no time."

"Sorry, boss, but I'll pass. Wouldn't be able to do half my shit in bed without a mouth."

Asaara wrinkled her nose. When had they started talking about sex?

Bull's voice brought her back. "You didn't answer my question, Asaara."

She immediately wanted to throw her horns at him and the blatant authority in his tone, but she resisted. She'd only look foolish. "I did, with Valo-Kas. Actually, they gave me more than Maaras-Lok. They made me try every drink in the tavern. Kaaris wouldn't shut up until I had the Chasind Sack Mead."

Bull chuckled. "You get drunk?"

She gave him a look. "I was a lightweight surviving off of gruel and shitting liquids for twenty years of my life. What do you think?"

He grimaced and pulled his feet back to the floor. "Could've lived without knowing that bit."

She snorted and took another swig of ale. "Yeah, well, you asked."

*

It took exactly six months before she felt comfortable enough to consider him in bed, and another two before The Iron Bull suggested they do just that. Ignoring the thrill in her blood, she'd raised an eyebrow and promised from thence forth to refer to that moment as "the day Bull grew his balls." She suggested they write a children's book about it. 

That was the conversation they had in her bedroom the hour before they fucked.

After he took her in his mouth, twice, and she'd cussed him out enough that even she was having trouble thinking of original ways to insult him, he lay her (wrestled, more like; she didn't take bottom easily) on the bed and eased into her slick heat.

Asaara groaned at the stretch and tried to relax unused muscles. His knot scraped uncomfortably against places that hadn't been touched in years. She'd forgotten that Qunari cock came as a package deal.   
Bull noticed her discomfort. "This your first time with a kossith, Saar?" 

His voice was rough and his breathing heavy, and maybe that name wasn't so bad after all.

"No," she managed. "Just been a while."

"How long?" He began to move.

She had to hold her breath for a full ten seconds before she could respond. "Six years."

Bull's stomach tensed with his sudden laugh. "He so bad that he scared you off from the rest of us?"

Asaara felt a flare of irritation. "Can we please not talk about the other guy that fucked me right now?"

"Sure, boss. We'll just talk about the guy fucking you right now."

Asaara glared at him, then shoved his hand between her legs. "Get to fucking work. And I mean that in the most literal sense."

Bull laughed again, but he sat back on his haunches so he could fuck her properly. 

At this angle, his knot fully touched her, raking against her inner walls in a way that would have been painful if not for the thick layer of arousal coating her thighs. Her stomach clenched when he found her sweet spot, and she hissed hot air through her teeth. Bull shifted on his knees and his cock twitched hard when he noticed the pleasured tension in her jaw. Asaara didn't tell him to keep moving the way he was — her pride wouldn't let her — but Bull was nothing if not observant, and he didn't need a thank you to know she liked it. 

His thrusts were short and slow while he tried to draw out the way his knot ground into hers, and Asaara had to bite her tongue to keep from yelling at him to move faster.

Bull slid a knuckle over the striated scar that traveled from the corner of her eye down to her throat, a sheer path to death from the Ben-Hassreth who'd killed Saarebas from beside her on the battlefield. She killed him, too, just to even the numbers, and then an hour later tore the stitches from her mouth and breathed blessed freedom. 

Bull didn't seem to note or care anything for the scar's history. All his focus was in the tight line of her jaw, and the way she had her hands clenching the sheets to keep from touching him.

"You can trust me, Asaara," he said, and despite the soft tone of his voice, his thrusts roughened, deepened, the same way his voice did, the same way his lone eye did.

His knot slid further now, past the first sweet spot and into another, and with the added pleasure it was bitter torture to keep in the noise at the back of her throat.

"Not seeing much trust there," Bull said dryly, and his hand idled its way down to her clit.

She choked on air, but this time she couldn't hold back the strangled moan that tore from her throat.

Bull's smirk only bruised her pride.

" _Vashedan,_ " she spat at him. _"Harder, dathrasi."_

She idly realized she had slipped into Qunlat again, and she made a mental note to fix that habit promptly. It would be quite a spectacle if the Inquisitor began speaking the tongue of savages in the middle of Val Royeaux.

" _Harder where, Asaara?_ "

Qunlat sounded good with his voice, rough and rich and heavy.

His thumb pressed too-hard on her clit. " _Here?_ " His hips snapped against hers, force enough to rock the bed. " _Here?_ " A faint twist of his lips before he very deliberately ground his knot up against her front wall. " _Or here?_ "

" _Ah,_ fuck." Asaara pressed her feet into the mattress and  _heaved._  Her thighs groaned in half-hearted protest, but she easily switched their position so that now she was the one glaring down into the pale blue of his eye. " _You're worse that the bas. Stop_ talking _already."_

The Iron Bull did not give any warning before he surged upwards and claimed her mouth. Or rather, tried to, and found the woman atop him was just as solid as she looked. She might have savored his look of utter surprise had his little stunt not sparked her instinct to fight. The likes of which was stronger than the need to eat, fuck, and breathe. Her mind was blank as slate the moment before she realized she was sending the full brunt of her horns against his, knocking him back with a pained grunt. 

It didn't hurt like she remembered, none of the dizziness or —

"Ow," came Bull's voice from below.

She blinked, feeling mildly guilty. " _Are you alright?"_

He chuckled. " _Not the most pleasurable sex I've had._ "

The guilt left her in an instant. " _Next time don't jump at me like you're going to throw a knife in my gut._ "

" _Will do, kadan._ "

The word came out his mouth as easily as the rest, and the warm amusement in his voice sparked something in her belly.

" _Weren't we doing something before I half-killed you?_ " She rocked her hips against his meaningfully.

He looked at her with a wry smile. " _Didn't peg you as a sucker for soft words._ "

She scowled and leaned over the length of his body to press his arms against the pillows. " _I'm no basra woman who sits by her window and waits for her man to throw flowers at her door. I am Tal-Vashoth, daughter of Qunari, and I will conquer you the way I conquer all my enemies._ "

She set a pace fast enough to hurt, the deeper angle pressing his cock into her with too much friction, his knot no longer pleasurable but painful. 

At first Bull looked like he will stop her,  _parshaara_  forming on his lips, so she bit him and took him deeper. After that, he was silent save his breathing, and then his knot swelled wide enough that she thought she'd burst. But she didn't, and he was still hard inside her, waiting for more of what she'd given him. 

"Am I your enemy then?" he asked quietly after she made no move to seek her own pleasure. He'd switched to common again, and it momentarily threw her off.

"No, but you could be when this is all over," she answered honestly. "I would like if you were not, but even I who turn my back on the Qun know what a pull it has."

Bull was quiet a moment, then he said, "You were Qunari once. You know what it is to seek  _ataash_  among the Antaam. I don't know I have the strength to turn away from it as you do."

Asaara gave a wry smile. "Hissrad until the end, eh? Very Qunari of you. Before we started fucking, I was so sure you would never settle as my friend." She smirked and wriggled her hips.  "Lucky for you, I'm Tal-Vashoth, which means you get the benefit of both."

His laugh was breathless. "Sure, boss. Luck's always been mine when it comes to women."

Her anger cooled, Asaara focused on her pleasure once again. Bull, too, took it as his stoic duty to make her come as many times as possible. Because they were literally attached at the hip, their options were limited, but Bull was creative and a willing partner.  His first focus had been her clit — obviously his ego couldn't stand the thought that he'd come before her — and she'd fallen embarrassingly quickly with that one. Then, he'd taken a shot at biting her like she'd done him, and had been delightedly surprised to find that she was more than receptive. 

Now that he was not the only one who'd found release, the urge to come was sated to the point that they did not mind to work a little for their pleasure. 

Bull had found his way on top again, and he was pressing into her in such a way that his knot plucked at twin points of pleasure. 

His teeth scraped her neck, and she growled at him. Moments like these it was hard to control her nature. Fucking and fighting, the heart of kossith savagery. 

" _So slow_ ," she taunted. " _I should have just taken care of myself._ "

He wasn't fooled this time though, and he didn't take the bait. His pace remained smooth and even, drawing out until the head of his cock was trapped inside her by his knot and then pushing in to the hilt.   
His hand drew a lazy trail up the bared flesh of her throat and jaw, past a pointed ear and to the sharp curl of her horns. She had horns like his Tama did, thick and sturdy with razor-sharp tips, not like the blunted ends of his own. 

At his touch, she tossed her head, instinctively trying to throw him off, but he only waited until she relaxed before resuming his path.

He ran his hand down across its arcing surface, back to where it connected to her skull. When he set to caress the sensitive flesh there, he felt her muscles tense seconds before a broken " _shit_ " escaped her and a sudden rush of fluid slid around his cock. 

Her response initially surprised him. Past lovers had said it felt nice — he himself had his horns touched by a dwarf overexcited by their height difference — but he'd never inspired a reaction quite so severe. 

But Bull's reputation in both bed and battle came from his ability to rethink and react, so he pressed harder into her skin and breathed, " _You like that, kadan?"_

" _Yes._ " The word came as a hiss. She bared her teeth at him. " _Just fuck me already._ "  
His pride rankled at her tone, and despite himself he felt his hips press harder against her. 

She wasn't quiet this time. When he tried to hold her still against the bed, she fought him tooth and nail, until he was using gravity and the full weight of his body to keep her from throwing him sideways. It only made her angrier, her sides heaving and muscles flexing in her fury.

Bull had seen the same look in the eyes of an enemy seconds before they died, the rage of the fight still in their head, only this time it was his cock inside her, not a blade.

If he was honest, he liked fucking better this way. If he didn't have to fight to feel good, there wasn't much point in it at all. 

So he held her down as best he could and rutted into her with all the abandon of a virgin set at his first Tama. He came twice more, and she once, before his knot released. Only then did the froth leave her mouth and did sanity return to her eyes.   
She held his gaze for long moments afterwards, in her eyes the vibrant green of the Fade, and if he remembered that more keenly than the silken feel of her cunt around his cock, he'd be the only one to know.

**Author's Note:**

> please excuse the ending. i was determined to post this thing the same night i wrote it, but even i, the all-knowing writer, need sleep


End file.
